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WORK TITLE: An Old, Cold Grave
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.ionawhishaw.com/
CITY: Vancouver
STATE: BC
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
Married to artist Terry Miller, with one son and two grandsons.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1948, in Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada; daughter of Lorna Addison Whishaw; married Terry Miller (an artist); children: one son.
EDUCATION:Antioch College, graduated; University of British Columbia, M.F.A., 1988; also attended Simon Fraser University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Former youth worker and social worker; worked as a high school creative writing teacher; high school principal in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, c. 1998-2014; writer, 2014–.
AVOCATIONS:Dance, painting, reading, gardening, “long distance cross country rambling in England.”
WRITINGS
Author of articles, poems, poetry translations, and short stories.
SIDELIGHTS
Novelist Iona Whishaw was raised in Canada and the United States (including Alaska), as well as Mexico and Central America. Her father was a geologist whose work took him around the world, and her mother was a highly educated, multilingual, well-traveled adventurer whose résumé included a brief stint as a British spy during World War II. This background would serve Whishaw well when, somewhat late in life, she decided to become a writer.
Whishaw was a youth worker and social worker before she became an English teacher. Although she spent part of her childhood in an idyllic lakefront community in southeastern British Columbia, her teaching career was centered in the Vancouver area. Eventually Whishaw became a respected high school principal, but she also found time to earn a graduate degree in creative writing. In her leisure time she honed her skills by writing short stories, poems, and poetry translations. She even published a children’s book, Henry and the Cow Problem, about a little boy whose fear of a cow breaking into his third-floor apartment drives him to ever more fanciful flights of the imagination. Only after retirement was Whishaw able to fulfill her longtime dream of becoming a novelist.
Dead in the Water
Dead in the Water is not only Whishaw’s first novel; it also marks the debut of the “Lane Winslow Mystery” series, which continues to grow in popularity. The year is 1946, and the remote community of King’s Cove, British Columbia, continues to languish in the economic aftermath of World War II. To twenty-something Lane Winslow, however, the town offers refuge from a past filled with danger and heartbreak. Lane was a British university student when she was recruited for an espionage mission behind enemy lines in occupied France. She survived the mission but lost the love of her life. She sees King’s Cove as a safe haven in which she can escape her nightmares and make a fresh start.
All goes well until a body is found in the creek behind Lane’s house. She does not recognize the murder victim, but he seems to be somehow connected to her. Lane makes every effort to cooperate with local authorities, especially the delightful young Inspector Darling, but she becomes alarmed when the evidence seems to point in her direction. Lane has secrets in her past that she is almost desperate to keep out of the local gossip mill, so she begins an investigation of her own. It turns out that Lane is not the only resident of King’s Cove with secrets, and one of them seems determined to frame her for murder.
When the tale was reprinted as A Killer in King’s Cove, readers found much to appreciate. In the San Francisco Book Review, Lyn Squire enjoyed the ambience “of a 1940s West Canadian locale;” in Reviewing the Evidence Lourdes Venard directed attention to “an engaging, quirky cast of characters.” While some readers would have preferred a snappier pace or a less transparent path to the guilty party, Venard observed that Whishaw’s debut “is so entertaining that you don’t mind much.” A reviewer in the Globe and Mail Online called it “a good historical mystery with a cast of characters that will provide plot lines for the series to come.”
An Old, Cold Grave
“This series … continues to get better and better,” wrote Venard in her review of An Old, Cold Grave in Reviewing the Evidence. In this installment, Lane becomes the go-to investigator when human remains are found among the ruins after the partial collapse of the sod roof into a root cellar. The bones seem to be those of a woman or child who was entombed around 1910, when the cellar was built. That was around the same time when the Anscombs disappeared from King’s Cove, and they had several children who could have matched the skeletal remains. Although the death occurred in the distant past, Inspector Darling is intrigued by the mystery–and the opportunity to work more closely with Lane. He recruits her to investigate missing-children reports from that time period, but her research takes her much farther afield.
The cold case enables Lane (and by extension, the reader) to dive into the history of the local area and the homesteaders whose backbreaking work eventually tamed the western wilderness. The investigation also reveals that, once again, Lane is not the only villager with secrets. Even the sisters who found the body–Gwen and Mabel Hughes–have mysterious connections to the past. Venard emphasized the lesson that “the consequences of past actions always catch up, sooner or later, with those involved.”
It Begins in Betrayal
That lesson resurfaces in It Begins in Betrayal. The story begins in British Columbia, where Inspector Darling is investigating the murder of Agatha Browning, an Englishwoman whose body is found near her cabin in the woods. Darling is suddenly ordered to England to assist in a different inquiry related to his wartime services as a pilot. Lane follows him there, only to learn that he has been arrested for murder. She knows that he could not possibly be guilty, but her efforts to help him are repeatedly stymied, as he is moved clandestinely from one prison to another. Lane begins to see a connection between Darling’s quandary and the sinister outfit that recruited her own services during the war. Back in Canada, Darling’s partner Constable Ames uncovers clues in Agatha’s murder that also lead back to England.
It Begins in Betrayal is not the only installment with an international flavor. In Death in a Darkening Mist, the death of a Russian-speaking guest at a local hot spring is connected to the ongoing purges of Soviet leader Josef Stalin. A Sorrowful Sanctuary draws Lane into the investigation of a grisly murder linked to the National Unity Party of Canada, which has ties to Nazi Germany. Although King’s Cove is far from the seats of power and the horrors of war, Lane learns that nowhere is safe when world powers collide.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Internet Bookwatch, February, 2017, review of Dead in the Water.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2017, review of An Old, Cold Grave; March 1, 2018, review of It Begins in Betrayal.
ONLINE
Globe and Mail Online (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/ (April 7, 2017), review of Dead in the Water; (October 20, 2017), review of An Old, Cold Grave.
Hidden Staircase, https://hiddenstaircase.net/ (October 16, 2017), review of An Old, Cold Grave.
Iona Whishaw Website, http://www.ionawhishaw.com (April 30, 2018).
Read Local BC, http://www.readlocalbc.ca/ (January 11, 2018), Monica Miller, author interview.
Reviewing the Evidence, http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/ (February 1, 2017), Lourdes Venard, review of Dead in the Water; December 1, 2017, Lourdes Venard, review of An Old, Cold Grave.
San Francisco Book Review, https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/ (April 13, 2018), Lyn Squire, review of Dead in the Water.
Vancouver Courier Online, http://www.vancourier.com/ (July 2, 2015), Cheryl Rossi, author interview.
Series
Lane Winslow Mystery
1. Dead In The Water (2015)
aka A Killer in King's Cove
2. Death in a Darkening Mist (2017)
3. An Old, Cold Grave (2017)
4. It Begins in Betrayal (2018)
5. A Sorrowful Sanctuary (2018)
Iona Whishaw was born in 1948 to English parents in British Columbia and brought up in Mexico and the US. She worked as a youth worker, taught high school and served for 16 years as a high school administrator in Vancouver, Canada. She earned a Masters of Arts degree in creative writing from UBC and was the recipient of the YWCA Women of Distinction in Education award and a Canada's Top Principals award. Her first work was a children's book, Henry and the Cow Problem, and because she has loved mysteries since her early love affair with Nancy Drew, she has recently embarked on a well-reviewed period mystery series beginning with A Killer In King's Cove and Death In The Darkening Mist. The books are set in 1946 in a charming backwater community in BC that the author lived in as a child. It is a community that cannot, alas, escape the press of the wider darker forces of the world and the effects of the war they have just come through. Her main character is based to no small extent on her own mother who engaged in espionage during WW2, and provided a life of travel and high adventure for her daughter.
Retired Vancouver principal crafts mysteries
Cheryl Rossi / Vancouver Courier
JULY 2, 2015 03:31 PM
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Iona Whishaw
Iona Whishaw traded teaching and administration for writing mystery novels.
When Iona Whishaw taught high school students the art of creative writing, she thought she’d be writing right alongside them.
“Teaching is probably one of the most creative jobs there is,” she said, noting it involves creating lesson plans, ideas and circumstances in which kids can learn. “I found all my creative juices were used up.”
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That’s why when she retired from her job as a high school principal last year she fulfilled a decade-long dream and published her first novel in April.
Daily writing became easier after she became an administrator, first at Vancouver Technical secondary, then at Sir Charles Tupper and David Thompson.
The award-winning Vancouver principal launched a period detective mystery called Dead in the Water at David Thompson. She was encouraged to receive congratulations from internationally popular mystery writer Gail Bowen, who writes the Joanne Kibourn murder mysteries.
Whishaw, who graduated with a master’s degree in fine arts from UBC in creative writing in 1988, started writing Dead in the Water before she retired.
She’d rise at 5:30 a.m. and write 400 words while her brain was “fresh.”
Dead in the Water focuses on a 26-year-old British woman, Lane Winslow, recruited to be a spy in the Second World War from university at the age of 19 because she spoke multiple languages. She was dropped into France with weaponry, equipment and messages and suffered a tragic love affair. At the war’s end, she moves to a tiny community in B.C. to start a new life. And then a dead body appears in a creek near her home and she’s charged with murder.
“I absolutely love the [mystery] genre. I love it, love it, love it,” Whishaw said. “The late, great [crime writer] P.D. James said a good mystery has to be a good novel. I’ve never liked really gory mysteries, or penny dreadfuls.
But there are a lot of really wonderful writers who write excellent novels [where] the whole ethical and moral core is the mystery.”
Meeting James in Vancouver a decade ago motivated Whishaw to pursue her mystery novel-writing dreams.
“Almost from that moment, I thought dammit, I can do this,” said Whishaw, who was in her mid-50s at the time. “She started late.”
Aspects of Whishaw’s real life inspired facets of Dead in the Water.
Winslow’s strong, independent spirit was inspired by Whishaw’s mother, who spoke seven languages, completed four master’s degrees after Whishaw went to university and hitchhiked to Alaska when Whishaw was a child because she was sick of waiting for her husband to return from geology field trips. Lorna Addison Whishaw also told her daughter she’d briefly served as a spy during the war in South Africa where Whishaw’s father was a pilot for the RAF. Her mother’s father was a spy who died in 1943 in a German prison.
Whishaw started her career in education as a youth worker. She became an English teacher and then an administrator and says each role helped her craft well-rounded characters.
“Education is all about people,” she said. “When you’re in education, every single day you’re dealing with real people in every kind of situation, in joy, in tragedy, in fear.”
Whishaw published a children’s book Henry and the Cow Problem nearly 20 years ago, along with poetry, short stories and poetry translations. She spent much of her childhood in Mexico and speaks Spanish. Her education articles appeared in American publications before she self-published Dead in the Water with FriesenPress, which also publishes yearbooks. She was recognized as one of the top 40 principals in Canada in 2012 and won a YWCA Woman of Distinction award in 2010.
Whishaw advises writers to compose without hesitation.
“Regardless of what you think is going to come out of your pen or your computer, pick a number [of words] and write to that number every day, and never, ever stop and go, well that sounds dumb, I won’t write that,” she said. “Just keep writing because some of the most brilliant ideas come out as you are writing.”
Dead in the Water is available at Hager Books in Kerrisdale and for order online. For more information, see ionawhishaw.com.
Iona Whishaw retired from the Vancouver School Board after a career as a youth worker, teacher and award winning principal. She has a Master’s degree from the UBC Creative Writing department. A life of constant travel in childhood with interesting internationalist parents meant irregular schooling and a passion for books. Dead In The Water is her first mystery. Other publications include a children’s book, poetry, poetry translation, short fiction and educational articles.
IONA WHISHAW: “I LIKE MY FEMALE PROTAGONISTS TO BE STRONG”
FEATURED11 JANUARY 2018BY MONICA MILLER
HOMEFEATUREDIONA WHISHAW: “I LIKE MY FEMALE PROTAGONISTS TO BE STRONG”
The Globe and Mail proclaimed Lane Winslow was “a terrific series” by “a writer to watch.” Iona Whishaw‘s period detective series takes place in Canada immediately after the Second World War. Protagonist Lane Winslow is a retired intelligence officer and amateur sleuth who moved to the small (fictional) town of King’s Cove in the interior of BC hoping to put her demons to rest—but she can’t find a tranquil life when there are murderers to catch.
The fourth book in the series, It Begins in Betrayal (TouchWood Editions) comes out in April. We caught up with Iona to discuss detective stories, her writing inspirations, and her life as a writer.
You’ve published in multiple genres—short fiction, poetry, poetry translation, and children’s fiction—and the Lane Winslow series is your first foray into adult fiction genre. How did you get started?
I have always written on and off, and dreamed of one day writing a detective series. I have a degree from UBC, but I started this series about two years before I retired, as I knew I would want to be writing in retirement.
What are the key qualities you want in a book (as a writer or a reader)?
First and foremost I love characters that I would call “humane,” that regardless of their flaws or temperament, have the qualities of empathy and intelligence. A corollary to that is that I am interested in relationships and how they develop. I like my female protagonists to be strong and I like humour. As to action, I like to see action develop naturally out of the drives, dilemmas and needs of the characters.
The first three books, A Killer in King’s Cove, A Death in a Darkening Mist, and An Old, Cold Grave, were all published in just two years. What was the impetus for the Lane Winslow Mystery series?
The inspiration for the series comes from several things coming together. My mother, who, like all our mothers, had a whole life before she had me, seemed to live for adventure, and did work in intelligence during the war where she and my father lived in South Africa. Her own father was a spy as well in the previous war and well into the second war before he was killed in ’43. So that gave me a starting picture of the character I wanted to write about, not my mother, obviously, but definitely inspired by her.
And finally, I also love the place where I spent my early childhood and it seemed ideal to set a mystery series there, and have Lane Winslow’s house be the very real house I lived in, which my mother bought, for the whole of her and our very transient life was her favourite and most regretted house. It has been a labour of love for me, because the “King’s Cove” to give it its fictional name, of that era, is gone forever, wiped away by the influx of new people in the 60s, and it is a way for me to hang on to it, to give that old bygone world some life. Happily, the people who live there now have done a wonderful job of preserving many aspects of the community’s history.
How do you come up with the mystery to be solved, and how do you decide when it’s done?
The mystery for me always starts with a kind of “scene” in my head. I know nothing else about the story to come then that first scene. In A Killer in King’s Cove, it was Lane Winslow standing in the hall of the house she has just bought. In the second, Death in a Darkening Mist, it was a scene of Lane Winslow sitting in the dark of the tunnel of the local hot springs and being startled by someone speaking Russian. In the third book, An Old, Cold Grave, I imagined one of the ladies of the community going into her root cellar and finding skeletal remains.
Often I put myself into difficulties immediately. Why was he shot at the hot springs? How did no one hear it? Whose skeleton is it? How did it get there? How could someone bury a body in their root cellar and they not know? I spend the rest of the book trying to explain it.
In the forthcoming fourth book, It Begins in Betrayal, I imagined the absolutely correct and unimpeachably honest Inspector Darling in jail. In a way, the reader is discovering it as I am having Lane Winslow try to understand.
I think I feel that a story is “done” when the issues that led to the death of the victim in the stories are explored and resolved in some way. Deaths like that always involve secrets. I (and my readers, I expect) want to understand what those secrets are and how they led to such a final end. In common with most detective fiction, the story itself is done when the killer is revealed.
Your mystery novels, as period detective stories, could also be considered historical fiction. Why did you want to set them in post-war Canada?
I like writing about the past, especially detective fiction. The post-war period fascinates me because it was such a fulcrum in social change—soldiers were often changed by their experiences and had to come home to society also in the grip of change. Women had a place in public life they’d never had, and many people were really struggling.
At the same time—as is usual when there are massive forces for social change—you have the resistance, the desire to cling to the values and certainties of the past. The Canada of that period was nothing like the country we know now. It was Anglo in all its attitudes and values. Canada was very slow to take refugees, for example, and people were not very accepting of immigrants who did not fit that British mould. It provides an opportunity to explore the tensions of this change.
I can remember when I was a child what it was like when people weren’t “on the telephone” because they didn’t have a phone in the home. You also had to go through multiple levels of people to make a phone call. People had to wait for letters in the post to know what was going on. If you were lost on the road, or stuck in a snow bank, or lost in the forest, you couldn’t call anyone. These constraints interest me. They require more of people.
As well, it’s a long time ago, about 70 years. The post-war period is the period when my parents had served and were still young. They were both English and had in some ways a very English humour and reserve. I am interested in exploring relationships between those kinds of people, and the people around them because they are in such contrast to the “blab about everything” generations that followed them. I’m also very interested in portraying the strong women of that time. My mother was always doing things she wasn’t “supposed” to, and in fact, she was so strong that I was genuinely surprised when I first learned that men were supposed to be ‘stronger’ than women.
What are you reading and what do you recommend?
I’m always reading detective fiction along with anything else. At the moment I’m reading James Runcie’s Grantchester series, and a wonderful book about London in the bombing called The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard.
Read local! Not to be missed is the wonderful novel by Aislinn Hunter’s The World Before Us, a gripping literary mystery involving the ghostly layering of two periods of time. I’ve just finished reading Sam Wiebe’s Invisible Dead, a great young BC detective writer. A great wartime book is Birds Eye View by Elinore Florence.
Who is your favourite hero/heroine (fictional or real)?
Hard one! So many! In order of time, Elizabeth Bennet is number one of my fictional heroines. Lord Peter Wimsey and his companion in detection Harriet Vane. As well Porfiry Rostnikov, and Abe Liebermen, two wonderful detectives invented by the great writer Stuart Kaminsky.
What is the one book that you wish you wrote, and why?
There are a million of these as well—nearly every book I ever loved! I wish I’d written Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell because it’s brilliantly written immersive storytelling. More recently I was raving about Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave. I’m a huge and envious fan of the British writer Kamila Shamsie. Her books are novels set in historical times that explore the nature of relationships across cultures. I think they are transcendent.
Where do you write, and what do you surround yourself with when you write?
We have a spare room in our apartment, and I always write first thing in the morning with my pink fluffy bathrobe on, sitting on the bed with the Macbook perched on a pillow on my lap.
Iona’s Shelfie: one of the many bookcases stuffed full of great reads
What is your favourite thing to eat or drink while writing?
Because of that early morning writing schedule, I always make myself a pot of very good English tea, and drink that as I write.
The fourth book in your series, It Begins in Betrayal, comes out in April. For me, this would be a great excuse to binge-read the first three books. Is reading the series from the beginning important to the overall plot, or can a reader jump in anywhere?
I think the binge read from the beginning is a great idea. I’ve certainly spoken with people who’ve picked up with the second or third book, but they always want to go back and find out how we got there. They are definitely sequential and are best enjoyed in order.
Iona Whishaw has been a youth worker, social worker, teacher and an award-winning high school principal, who continued with her writing throughout her working life. Iona was born in Kimberley, BC, but grew up in a number of different places, including a small community on Kootenay Lake, and now lives in Vancouver, BC. She received her Masters in Creative writing from UBC and has published short fiction, poetry, poetry translation and one children’s book, Henry and the Cow Problem.
The Lane Winslow mystery series, which began with A Killer in King’s Cove, is Iona’s first foray into adult fiction. The fourth instalment of the series, It Begins In Betrayal, comes out in April 2018 from TouchWood Editions.
Iona Whishaw has been a youth worker, social worker, teacher and an award winning High School Principal, who continued with her writing throughout her working life. Receiving her Masters in Creative writing from UBC, Iona has published short fiction, poetry, poetry translation and one children's book, Henry and the Cow Problem. The Lane Winslow mystery series is her first foray into adult fiction.
Iona was born in Kimberley BC, but grew up in a number of different places, including a small community on Kootenay Lake, as well as Mexico and Central America, and the US because of her father's geological work. She took a degree in history and education from Antioch College, and subsequent degrees in Writing at UBC and pedagogy at Simon Fraser University. Her own writing output took a brief back seat during her teaching career, but she shared her passion for writing by nurturing a love of writing in the students in English, Creative Writing, and Spanish classes. During the course of her career as a Principal in Vancouver she was awarded the Woman of Distinction in Education by the YWCA in 2010 and a Canada's Outstanding Principals award in 2012.
Her hobbies have included dance, painting, reading, and gardening. She currently is a vocalist for a small Balkan dance band in Vancouver, and is patiently waiting for her next opportunity to engage in her current pash, long distance, cross country rambling in England.
She is married, has one son and two grandsons, and lives in Vancouver with her artist husband, Terry Miller.
Whishaw, Iona: IT BEGINS IN BETRAYAL
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Whishaw, Iona IT BEGINS IN BETRAYAL TouchWood Editions (Adult Fiction) $14.95 5, 1 ISBN: 978-1-77151-261-9
A tale of two murders.
Agatha Browning, an Englishwoman who kept to herself, has been stabbed to death near her ransacked cabin in the woods of British Columbia. The only clue is her missing car, which was driven away by an unknown woman. Inspector Darling is abruptly pulled off the case by a government official who demands that he go to England to assist in an inquiry into an incident when he was a pilot during World War II. His departure poses a serious complication for his budding love affair with Lane Winslow. A spy during the war who was in a disastrous relationship with her controlling boss, Lane left England to live an unfettered life in Canada. Deeply disturbed when Darling is forced to return to England, she follows him and learns that he's been arrested for murder. The police claim to have eyewitness testimony that he killed one of his men after their plane was shot down in France. Although Scotland Yard's DI Sims sees a clear case, he's impressed by Darling and willing to look deeper. Darling's friend in England has hired a lawyer who initially doubts that Lane can help. But her determination to interview the other crew members, one of whom turns out to have died recently under suspicious circumstances, changes his attitude. As Darling is first granted, then denied bail and moved from prison to prison, Lane sees the sinister hand of the special branch she worked for behind his predicament. Meanwhile, back in Canada, Constable Ames, who's continuing to work the case, finds that the answers to Agatha Browning's murder lie in her past in England.
The fourth in Whishaw's character-driven series (An Old, Cold Grave, 2017, etc.) is relentlessly exciting from start to finish.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Whishaw, Iona: IT BEGINS IN BETRAYAL." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959907/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=42e29208. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959907
Whishaw, Iona: AN OLD, COLD GRAVE
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Whishaw, Iona AN OLD, COLD GRAVE TouchWood Editions (Adult Fiction) $14.95 10, 17 ISBN: 978-1-77151-240-4
Anyone who yearns for the good old days should think twice before approaching this gritty tale.Lane Winslow grew up in an affluent English household and served as a spy during World War II. A failed romance and lack of family ties have encouraged her move to rural King's Cove, British Columbia, in search of tranquility. Beautiful and self-sufficient, she has already been involved with two murder cases (Death in a Darkening Mist, 2017, etc.) and forged a working relationship with Inspector Darling that each secretly hopes may lead to more. When sisters Gwen and Mabel Hughes and their mother, Gladys, discover human remains after the ceiling of their root cellar partly collapses, their first thought is to call Lane because of her in with the police. Although there's obviously no need to rush in a death whose date and cause are unknown, Darling and Constable Ames are determined to at least identify the bones, which appear to be those of a child or small woman who died sometime during the 37 years after the root cellar was built around 1910. Darling asks Lane to help out by trying to identify who went missing all those years ago. Most of the community supports her efforts, but there are plenty of secrets buried in the past. At length the search focuses on the Anscomb family, who vanished from the area after an unsuccessful attempt to grow apples, since they had several young children fitting the description. Flashbacks to 1910 reveal a hard life with no modern conveniences and the relentless work schedule required to keep families alive. Even though her friends continue to hide things, Lane manages to learn a great deal--maybe too much, as she realizes when a ghost returns from the past and threatens her safety. A fascinating picture of a life in which many people spent every waking hour working and a disturbing look at the fate of orphaned children raise this mystery above the ordinary.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Whishaw, Iona: AN OLD, COLD GRAVE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192393/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c30b9dcb. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502192393
A Killer in King's Cove
Internet Bookwatch. (Feb. 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
A Killer in King's Cove
Iona Whishaw
TouchWood Edition
103-1075 Pendergast Street, Victoria, BC V8V 0A1
http://www.touchwoodeditions.com
c/o Publishers Group West (distributor)
9781771511988, $14.95, PB, 432pp, www.amazon.com
"A Killer in King's Cove" by Iona Whishaw is set in 1946, and is the story of war-weary young ex-intelligence officer Lane Winslow who leaves London looking for a fresh start. When she finds herself happily settled in King's Cove, a sleepy hamlet nestled in the idyllic interior of British Columbia surrounded by a suitably eclectic cast of small-town characters Lane feels like she may finally be able to put her past to rest. But then a body is discovered, the victim of murder, and although Lane works alongside the town's inspectors Darling and Ames to discover who might possibly have motivation to kill, she casts doubt on herself. As the investigation reveals facts that she has desperately tried to keep a secret, it threatens to pull her into a vortex of even greater losses than the ones she has already endured. A simply riveting read by a master of the genre, "A Killer in King's Cove" is especially recommended the personal reading lists of dedicated mystery buffs, as well as an enduringly popular acquisition choice for community library Mystery/Suspense collections.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Killer in King's Cove." Internet Bookwatch, Feb. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A486309627/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=08c503f1. Accessed 13 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A486309627
An Old, Cold Grave
By Iona Whishaw
STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
TouchWood Editions, 329 pages, $16.95
Lane Winslow, the intrepid sleuth of King's Cove, is back in her third adventure and, like the first two, it's a charmer. Once again, British Columbia's own Iona Whishaw's delightful modern gloss on the venerable British cozy provides a perfect weekend getaway. Fans know that Winslow (a character based on the author's mother, who was a real British spy) has a history with military intelligence. The new book begins two years after the end of the Second World War, although the war of rationing and saving is still holding on, and so the Hughes sisters are preserving and potting and storing it all in the root cellar. When a nasty odour signals potential ptomaine, sister Gwen heads down for a cleanup. What she finds is far more than spoiled carrots and runner beans. There's a dead body in the cellar, and it appears to be that of a child. Enter Winslow and her on-again-off-again friend/lover Inspector Darling. Just what did happen in the root cellar? This is a cleverly plotted story with a delightful setting and amusing characters. Once again, Whishaw keeps us guessing to the end.
A Killer in King's Cove
By Iona Whishaw
TouchWood Editions, 409 pages, $16.95
There's plenty of room on my shelves for a good British-style cozy, particularly when it's actually set in British Columbia in 1946 and has an engaging female sleuth. You'll find all that in this very good debut by Iona Whishaw, whose previous novel was for children. Her heroine, Lane Winslow, a former British spy, is based on Whishaw's own mother's experience. Winslow had a difficult war, lots of secrets to hide and a lost lover. She's come to King's Cove, B.C. to recoup her spirits and rebuild her life. The town seems idyllic, beautiful and peaceful, with welcoming people. Winslow may have left the war but it isn't done with her. First, there are the nightmares that leave her exhausted; then a corpse turns up in the local water supply. There's no clue to the identity except the name: Lane Winslow. As she searches for clues to a killer, Winslow finds it more and more difficult to hide her past, guard her secrets, and find the peace she seeks. This is <>. Iona Whishaw is a writer to watch.
A Killer in King’s Cove
We rated this book:
$8.99
A man’s body, the skull bashed in, is found in the creek that supplies water to the small rural community of King’s Cove in British Columbia. None of the residents admit to knowing the victim even though one of them must have committed the crime. Suspicion falls on Lane Winslow, a recent arrival from the U.K., in Canada to forget the horrors of World War II. Intrigue abounds among the dozen or so inhabitants, their histories stretching, in some cases, back to events in World War I. Clues are liberally scattered along the way; in fact too liberally because this reviewer figured out the solution before Lane, the heroine of the piece, managed to do so. The story proceeds at a leisurely pace, with the body, for example, not discovered until the sixtieth page. The writing compensates, however, conjuring up nicely the ambiance <
Reviewed By: Lyn Squire
Author: Iona Whishaw
Star Count: 3.5/5
Format: eBook
Page Count: 432 pages
Publisher: TouchWood Editions
Publish Date: 2016-09-20
ISBN: 9781771511988
Issue: November 2016
Category: Mystery, Crime & Thriller
A KILLER IN KING'S COVE
by Iona Whishaw
TouchWood Editions, October 2016
432 pages
$16.95 CAD
ISBN: 1771511982
Buy from Amazon.com
Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada
At the age of 26, Lane Winslow already feels she needs a reset in her life. She leaves war-torn England, where she had worked as an undercover intelligence officer in the Second World War, and moves to Canada. On a whim, she picks British Columbia after seeing a travel poster, settling in the bucolic countryside of King's Cove. She had hoped to put much distance between herself and her former life, fleeing not only her previous line of work but wartime death and heartbreak.
But it's never that easy to put the past behind. Before she's even settled into her new home, a man's body is found in a creek behind the house, and all the evidence seems to point to Lane as the killer. He seemingly has ties to Lane, although she's never met him. Trying to puzzle out why someone would try to frame her, Lane sets out to catch the killer. Although her wartime job had been to run messages behind enemy lines, the enemy this time appears to be closer—and more shadowy.
In this debut book, the first of a promised series, author Iona Whishaw brings to life a rural country town from the 1940s—from the small post office that is gossip central to garden tea parties. She's given Lane a potential love interest, the well-named Inspector Darling, and created <
§ Lourdes Venard is an independent editor who divides her time between New York and Maui.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, February 2017
AN OLD, COLD GRAVE
by Iona Whishaw
Touchwood Editions, September 2017
337 pages
$16.95 CAD
ISBN: 1771512407
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Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada
In the third of a series, Lane Winslow, a former spy living in quiet King's Cove, British Columbia in 1947, is pressed back into police service when the bones of a child are discovered in a neighboring root cellar.
The remains have been found by the Hughes women—Gladys and her middle-aged daughters, Gwen and Mabel—who theorize the child's body must have been hidden in 1910, when their cellar roof was rebuilt. Thirty-seven years later, this discovery brings back memories of the Anscombs, a strange family that lived nearby with several children. Soon after helping the Hughes put on a new cellar roof, the family packed up and left the area. Flashbacks, told through Gwen and Mabel, reveal other secrets the sisters have kept from each other all these years.
Because Lane lives nearby—and has proved herself n other cases—she is asked once again by Inspector Darling to help out with the mystery of the bones. The main mystery is interspersed with the storyline of Erin Landy, a teenage girl who wants to go off to college, but is being pressured by her parents to marry. As an act of sabotage, she has damaged a piece of equipment at a sawmill—and been arrested for it. Here, too, Darling asks for Lane's help. Hearing the girl's predicament, Lane sides with Erin. Darling is in love with Lane, but he questions whether Lane, happy in her independence, has also nixed the idea of marriage.
Darling warns Lane not to put herself in danger. Nevertheless, despite taking precautions, just being part of the investigation puts her at risk.
<
§ Lourdes Venard is an independent editor who divides her time between New York and Maui.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, December 2017
An Old, Cold Grave. A satisfying historical mystery featuring a strong female protagonist.
OCTOBER 16, 2017 / BECKMANK
An Old, Cold Grave (A Lane Winslow Mystery)
By Iona Whishaw
Rating 4.5/5 Stairs
Don’t miss out on your chance to win a copy of this book! Giveaway: Enter to win a copy of An Old, Cold Grave. Contest runs through 25 October 2017.
AnOldColdGraveIt’s 1947 in the small community of King’s Cove, and Ms. Whishaw wastes no time getting the mystery started. In the first chapter, Gwen Hughes is in the root cellar, and notices part of the sod roof has fallen in. As she inspects the damage, she finds an unexpected (and unwanted) surprise – bones. A child had been buried in the roof of their root cellar.
Lane Winslow (a relatively new resident to King’s Cove) and Inspector Darling are quickly summoned to the scene. Lane’s curiosity is piqued – who do the bones belong to and how long have they been there? Inspector Darling has his hands full with another case, and asks Lane if she might do some digging with the locals to identify who the bones might belong to.
As Lane asks questions, long forgotten secrets begin to surface. Will she be able to uncover the truth?
While this is the third book in the Lane Winslow series, new readers (like myself) won’t have a problem jumping in to this installment.
What Worked For Me
First of all – how gorgeous is that cover?!
There are so many elements of this book that I enjoyed. The historical setting was perfect, with Ms. Winslow bringing the reader into 1947. (I especially appreciated the detail of the simple act of Lane answering a telephone, waiting to make sure it was her ring.) The rural setting adds to the historical charm.
Lane Winslow is a strong, independent woman. She may not be an official “detective” by profession (she’s an ex-British intelligent officer), but in many ways she reminds me of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs. Lane is smart and sympathetic, and determined to solve this mystery.
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Not only is this a historical mystery, but it’s also a cold case. This unknown child was buried over 35 years ago. Lane spends time learning about life in King’s Cove in the early 1900’s, as well as getting to know more about the local residents. Lane takes time to explore the area and learn about the homesteaders who struggled to make a life there. Ms. Whishaw flips the narrative between the current 1947 timeline and events in the 1910’s to tell the story.
Regular visitors to Hidden Staircase probably know by now that the local characters in a series are important to me, and King’s Cove delivers. The locals are likable, down-to-earth people, who have lived in King’s Cove for decades. A younger American family with lively children is mentioned, but they are away traveling for this installment. It sounds like they are prominent in the earlier books in this series. I also really enjoyed Inspector Darling and his interactions with both Lane and Constable Ames.
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What Didn’t Work
The only piece that didn’t really work for me was Inspector Darling’s other case, which involved a teenage girl suspected of some damage to a local mill. It’s not that I didn’t like it per se, but for me it just didn’t work as well with the main mystery.
Overall, a satisfying historical mystery featuring a strong female protagonist. I can’t wait to catch up on this series.
Don’t forget to enter! Giveaway: Enter to win a copy of An Old, Cold Grave. Contest runs through 25 October 2017.
Many thanks to TouchWood Editions for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.